You there was naked joy in Rob Earnshaw's face as he celebrated scoring for Derby County against Arsenal in today's English Premiership soccer match. He ran towards the crowd, front-flipping through the air before launching into a stiff-legged dance probably picked up from a Morris Day video.
His team was losing.
The eventual result was 2-6 in favor of visiting Arsenal, and it was pretty apparent which team had been at the bottom of the league table since day one and which had been in first place most of the season. And the London-based away team was even more dominant than the scoreline suggests.
The Premiership is the most lucrative, well-publicized league in the world, but it is also the most polarized. Every team is fantastically rich, but the four largest teams, of which Arsenal is one, make the rest look like serfs.
Admittedly, this year's vintage of Derby County is by far the worst team ever to play in this league. The disparity in talent between these two teams is such that Derby's ability to score even one goal, let alone two, is a shock.
Add to that the frustrating season Earnshaw has had and you can probably excuse his joy. Derby paid more to sign him than they ever have for any player and he has not justified the outlay.
The team's results have been so bad that the club learned it would be demoted to the second tier of English soccer in March, two months before the end of the season. They have only won one game this season. Their best players left for teams in the second tier midway through the season. They just aren't trying anymore.
But a league that includes a team of Arsenal's talent and one of Derby's cluelessness cannot be healthy.
The Londoners, known for playing attractive soccer, were allowed to be at their aesthetic best, despite starting with five reserve team players. They produced sweeping passing moves involving curled through balls, surging runs across half the field, deft back-heeled touches and inch-perfect thirty-yard high passes that Derby's defenders seemed disinclined to deal with.
It was a dizzying hurricane of skill that none of Derby's starting players seemed even remotely capable of withstanding, let alone reproducing. The goals included three for Togolese superstar Emmanuel Adebayor, who didn't even play in the first half, and one each for the raw teenager Theo Walcott, half-injured Robin van Persie, and Danish forward Nicklas Bendtner, who has endured a terrible season. Each was a mark of glaring shame on the home team, whose fans started leaving well before the final whistle.
It was all the more embarrassing because Arsenal's is not a great team. Derby even drew level in the first half, defender Jay McEveley pouncing on negligent Arsenal marking in the penalty area off a corner kick. But they didn't believe in themselves, just as they have not all season. They are depressingly mediocre and will not be missed--only American midfielder Benny Feilhaber, a second-half substitute, even seemed capable of passing the ball.
But the Premiership will see more teams whose players are so inadequate that they celebrate exuberantly even when they are losing. Unless something is done, but I don't know what that would be.
Earnshaw did this
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment